Theophilus A. Benson (Theo Benson)
Research Assistant
IBM PhD Fellow
Computer Science Department
University of Wisconsin, Madison


Computer Sciences & Statistics
Room 7269
tbenson {at} cs.wisc.edu


CV (Dec 2011)

News

  • Dec 2011: On the job market. Please click here for application materials.

  • Dec 2011: Presented "MicroTE: The Case for Fine-Grained Traffic Engineering in Data Centers"  

  • Oct 2011: Presented "CloudNaaS: A Cloud Networking Platform for Enterprise Applications"  

  • Aug 2011: Presented "Demystifying Configuration Challenges and Trade-offs in Network-based ISP Services"  

  • Nov 2010: Presented "Peeking into the Cloud: Toward User-driven Cloud Management" at Clouds10  

  • Nov 2010: Received IMC Best Paper Award for "Network Traffic Characteristics of Data Centers in the Wild"  

  • Nov 2010: Presented "Network Traffic Characteristics of Data Centers in the Wild" at IMC  

    •

About Me

I am a sixth year graduate student with Prof. Aditya Akella. My general research interest lie within systems and networks but my most recent work has been along the management and traffic engineering dimensions of enterprise networks, data center networks, and cloud computing. Prior to graduate school, I was a back-end software engineer/release engineer for a start-up out of MIT media labs called Open Ratings.

My current and past research projects include:

  • Data Center Measurements: Study of traffic in data centers. Data set available here.
  • MicroTE: An online centralized approach to traffic engineering in data centers.
  • CloudView: A study of the issues encountered by users of IaaS cloud platforms.
  • TrafficJam: A traffic generator for data centers.[coming soon]
  • ConfCap: An application for measuring the complexity involved in managing enterprise networks.

Work Experience

Pre-UW

Papers and Publications

Conference

  1. MicroTE: The Case for Fine-Grained Traffic Engineering in Data Centers
    Theophilus Benson, Ashok Anand, Aditya Akella, and Ming Zhang (Microsoft Research) 
    Proceedings of CoNEXT, Tokyo, Japan, Dec 2011

  2. Understanding the Evolution of Network Configuration: A Tale of Two Campuses  
    Hyojoon Kim, Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella, Nick Feamster (Georgia Tech) 
    Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Berlin, Germany, Nov 2011

  3. CloudNaaS: A Cloud Networking Platform for Enterprise Applications  
    Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella, Anees Shaikh and Sambit Sahu (IBM Research) 
    Proceedings of the Symposium on Cloud Computing (SOCC), Cascais, Portugal, Oct 2011

  4. Demystifying Configuration Challenges and Trade-offs in Network-based ISP Services  
    Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella and Aman Shaikh (AT&T Research) 
    Proceedings of SIGCOMM, Toronto, Canada, Aug 2011

  5. Network Traffic Characteristics of Data Centers in the Wild Best Paper Award  
    Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella and David Maltz (Microsoft Research) 
    Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Melbourne, Australia, Nov 2010

  6. Mining Policies From Enterprise Network Configuration 
    Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella and David Maltz (Microsoft Research) 
    Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Chicago, IL, Nov 2009

  7. Unraveling the Complexity of Network Management
    Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella, and David A. Maltz (Microsoft Research)
    Proceedings of the USENIX Networked Systems and Design Implementation (NSDI), Boston, MA, Apr 2009

Journals

  1. Understanding Data Center Traffic Characteristics
    Theophilus Benson, Ashok Anand, Aditya Akella, and Ming Zhang (Microsoft Research)
    Accepted for publication in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR), 2010

Workshop

  1. A First Look at Problems in the Cloud
    Theophilus Benson, Sambit Sahu (IBM Research), Aditya Akella, and Anees Shaikh (IBM Research)
    Proceedings of the USENIX HotCloud Workshop, Boston, MA, Jun 2010

  2. The Case for Fine-Grained Traffic Engineering in Data Centers  
    Theophilus Benson, Ashok Anand, Aditya Akella, and Ming Zhang (Microsoft Research)
    Proceedings of the USENIX NSDI Workshop for Research on Enterprise Networks (WREN), San Jose, CA, Apr 2010

  3. Understanding Data center Traffic Characteristics 
    Theophilus Benson, Ashok Anand, Aditya Akella, and Ming Zhang (Microsoft Research)
    Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Workshop for Research on Enterprise Networks (WREN), Barcelona, Spain, Aug 2009

Technical Reports

  1. The Case for Fine-Grained Traffic Engineering in Data Centers
    Theophilus Benson, Ashok Anand, Aditya Akella, and Ming Zhang (Microsoft Research)
    University of Wisconsin Computer Science Technical Report TR1666, 2009

  2. Unraveling complexity in network management
    Theophilus Benson, Aditya Akella, and David Maltz (Microsoft Research)
    University of Wisconsin Computer Science Technical Report TR1643, 2008

Wordle view of my work

Last updated: Friday December 16, 2011